


The Dangers of Flowers

by Cybertronic Purgatory (orphan_account)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Rough Sex, Sneezing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2012-03-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 18:25:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Cybertronic%20Purgatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Written for the kmeme.) Shepard doesn't like to admit it, least of all when anyone but Garrus is looking, but she is actually a really big, squishy softie. Fluffy, plotless and with a healthy dose of inter-species awkwardness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dangers of Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> A quick Monday fill written for the kinkmeme (that is rapidly taking over my waking moments) over on LJ for the prompt:
> 
> "So I'd really like to see a fic where Shepard is (how should I put this) just plain adorable. Maybe she's dropping her walls and showing Garrus a side he's never seen before, maybe she's just high off too much medi-gel and giggling up a storm. Whatever way you choose, I want her to be the cutest damn thing this side of the galaxy has ever seen. And then they fuck.
> 
> Bonus points if they do it somewhere awkward (like in the middle of a mission). Extra bonus points if there is rough sex on Garrus's part(biting, scratching, etc.)"
> 
> This is sweet, has sex pollen (though not in the way you're thinking!) and is a bit cracky and extremely plotless. Enjoy.

Garrus spent a lot of time observing Shepard, because, for lack of a better way to explain it, she was a fascinating person to study. Sure, she knew how to punch a thermal clip out faster than anyone else on the Normandy and she had that uncanny biotic ability that allowed her to rip across distances and put a shotgun round in a mercenary's face before Garrus even had the chance to line it up and down them. (Not that he kept a running tally or anything, but she was on the top of the Kill Steal League: last time he clicked his tongue and remarked that he could have punched through her shield if she wasn't more careful with the whole  _charge headfirst into an enemy seventy meters away and punch him to the ground with her krogan-like headbutt of doom_ she'd just kissed him on the mandible when they were out of sight of Operative Lawson. Which was hard to argue with, because those soft lips could silence him better than anything and he didn't really mind as much as he probably should.)

But there was also that, when she thought no one was looking, she would do things.  _Cute_  things.

Once on the Citadel, for example, she'd split off from Garrus and Tali discussing omni-tools (quarian expert engineering genius, sure, but damn it, the 3.45x models were useless no matter how much one modified them and there was no reason to even consider them as viable) and he found her a few minutes later in a Thessian bakery where she was gushing over the delicate pastries.

Gushing. Over sweets.

Of course, when she caught him looking she gave him a stare. He wasn't an expert on human behavior in any way, but he could probably teach a course or two in how to understand Commander Shepard (and to a degree he also wanted to attend some because she was a subject he couldn't get enough of) and that particular gaze meant only one thing.  _Tell anyone and she'd ask Grunt for directions on how to peel his mandibles off_.

That night, after a particularly straining calibration session – it still made him snort that everyone believed he was actually working long after the Thanix cannon upgrades had been installed, he was just playing that delightful game of Tetris to pass the time and look busy to keep Cerberus off his back – he had passed by the kitchen on his way to his bunk. Shepard had been there, beating a light red batter in a bowl.

"Sit your ass down, Vakarian," she had ordered, and for her, he could be a good turian. Sometimes. Like when she looked as if she was tearing the kitchen apart doing... Whatever it was she was doing.

Maybe a new kind of homemade bomb. Probably a bomb.

A small, grenade-size bomb that she was... Decorating?

With an unceremonious huff, she put down a platter with one of them on in front of him.

"What is this?" he asked, studying the small creation. The spongy body of it was dark blue, crumbling as he prodded cautiously at it with a claw: the top was a swirl of the red substance, decorated with a scattering of what looked like Palaven berries.

"It's a cupcake," she said, voice surly. "You eat it." She tapped her foot impatiently, arms crossed over her chest. "Eat it."

"As you say, Shepard."

He couldn't help that he was a bit hesitant, but it was hard to disobey when she was glaring him down like he had insulted her combat prowess. Biting into it, he chewed one, twice, and then had to stop and just... Savour it.

It was tooth-achingly sweet, but the good kind. How she had afforded, much less thought of buying (and then actually done it) all these ingredients from Palaven's scarce flora was beyond him, and that she then took them all together and whipped up such a delicious concoction...

He might have tackled her and ravished her then and there.  _Might_  being the operative word. Gardner had complained about stains but there was no footage to prove anything, and Garrus had a stash of cupcakes to eat between Tetris rounds for the next week, so all in all everyone was happy and the stains came out. Mostly. Her back was a bit worse for wear, but nothing medi-gel couldn't fix.

Point was: she did cute things, but catching her either resulted in getting beaten or a good pounding.

That's why he liked to keep an eye on her. She surprised him. As much of a hard-ass that Shepard was, drinking ryncol like it was water just to prove that her liver could take more than a krogan battle-master and cleaning her guns with rags made out of the clothing from her fallen enemies, she could still turn his perception upside down just through the little things.

It was the little things that mattered and won him over, every day, every hour.

So when she'd discreetly kneeled down and delicately cupped her hands around one of the large, brightly pink flowers and buried her nose in the lush petals, he had stopped and just taken in the sight. Which, considering they were in the middle of a shoot-out with a Blue Suns mercenary band, probably wasn't the brightest idea, but there was something undeniably... Tender... About it.

A moment where there was just Shepard and her little flower, and that unabashedly happy smile rarely seen outside of post-orgasmic bliss. As if the fact that there were Bad Guys with Big Guns pointed at them didn't matter, because she had found a potted plant and confound it all, she just had to distract him through smelling it.

Of course, Zaeed didn't have the patience for that, and gave the Commander a rough shove in the side. "No time to stop and smell goddamn roses, Shepard!" he shouted over the cross-fire, and she snapped out of the moment instantly, a blush on her cheeks but eyes set in angry determination.

Shepard made short work of the poor bastards that dared to oppose her, applying nothing short of bone-shatteringly forceful biotics to put them out.

When it was done, Zaeed snorted, earning him a glare from Shepard.

"Didn't peg you for such a softie, Commander."

The expression she gave him wasn't hard to comprehend – it was the typical warning glower, but instead of laying it on him, she suddenly scrunched her face up and rushed into the adjacent kitchen in the base without as much as explaining it.

There it was again. The element of surprise with her. Constantly lurking, ever ready to jump out and show him another aspect of the multi-faceted woman he couldn't get enough of.

"Wonder what crawled up her ass and died," Zaeed drawled, using the butt of his rifle to smash open a crate and started going through the contents, grunting in dissatisfaction. "Blue Suns have really gone down-hill if they can't even afford better crap than this."

A loud crash came from the kitchen in the base, sounding like glass shattering – and it was soon followed by other, louder ones.

Garrus had to investigate this turn of events, though from the sounds of it, it might end with him losing the still-good half of his face if he wasn't careful. Then again, she did seem to like scars, and he wasn't one to flake out on whatever perversions she had.

So he holstered his rifle and headed to possible doom.

"Maybe you can calm her down," Zaeed said as the door slid shut behind Garrus as he entered the kitchen, a strange grin plastered across the human's face.

A plate came flying at Garrus and he barely dodged it as it hit against the door, breaking into a thousand little pieces with a loud bang.

"Garrus!" Shepard exclaimed. "I'm sorry, but you can't just..." Her face twisted into that deranged expression again, nose wrinkled and lips pulled apart to reveal her front teeth.

Admittedly, there were some surprises that maybe weren't so good to be on the receiving end of. This one seemed to be sliding into that category, slowly but surely.

"Is everything alright?" he asked, mildly concerned.

"Shit on a stick," she cursed, throwing a glass at the wall as her face wrinkled up and a high-pitched noise escaped her, the glass covering most of the sound. "This is ridiculous!" She banged her hands on the counter, sniffing indignantly.

He approached her, exercising the appropriate amount of caution as he gently wrapped his arms around the curve of her waist and gave a light tug to pull her against his chest.

"I'm not allergic to peonies, damn it," she muttered into his collar.

It had been a few hours since they had sex and she had apparently come up with a new nickname for his member. As if the others weren't bad enough. "You've never had a reaction to mine," he offered, mandibles flaring slightly. "Well, not a negative one, at least." In the back of his mind he wondered if peonies was going to stick around and if so, for how long.

" _Peonies_ , not penis. The flowers out there."

She pushed him off and buried her nose in the crook of her elbow, muffling that peculiar noise again.

It clicked. "Shepard... Are you allergic to..."

"Don't."

"Those pink, harmless flowers?"

"I swear, Vakarian, I will–" She cut herself short, and this time he heard it. She was sneezing. A quick, brief  _'atchoo_ ' that was so high-pitched it made her sound decades younger, and as she looked up at him, wiggling her nose, he cupped her cheeks and felt that tiny twist in his heart whenever her icy blue eyes softened to him as they were then, slightly shimmery and wet and incredibly open.

He just had to risk it, even if she decided to give him a swift kick to the back of his heel.

"You're too damn cute, Shepard," he mumbled, stroking her cheek gently.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Cute?"

Preemptively tilting her head back, he nuzzled against the soft skin at her neck, drawing in of her scent, fragrant as ever at that ticklish spot behind her ear that without fail made her sigh softly. This time was no exception. Flip side of it, that particular noise that came from her succeeded in arousing his interests too.

"Okay," she relented, "I can go for cute. Just don't tell anyone else."

"Understood, Commander."

"That feels way too good, Garrus..."

It was all a smidge weird still, to find her softness alluring; but if the last weeks had taught him something, it was that he liked weird.

Letting out a low growl, he began to nip at her throat, gently at first, then more insistent, measured bites leaving deep red pinpricks but not breaking skin. Altering between laving and nibbling, he enjoyed the sound of her soft moans, and she began working on the seals of his suit.

Then she sneezed again and he couldn't help himself, it turned him on. His teeth sank through her skin, her nimble fingers digging into his neck and rubbing soft circles at that spot he so generously told her about when she was struggling to find his erogenous zones.

The memory of their awkward first time, with tentative touches and pliable skin stuck between plates and a broken wrist to top it all of; well, it made him claw at her armor, suddenly immensely frustrated that she wasn't wearing less. In the back of his mind, he marveled at the fact that 'awkward' had become more or less synonymous with 'sexually stimulating' for him.

The things she taught him...

"Here and now, Garrus?" Shepard pressed out, slightly incredulous – though he didn't need his visor to inform him of her physical reaction (increased heartbeat, shortness of breath, rising temperature and moistness in particular areas) to discern that she wanted it as much as him. Mainly because she was tearing her own suit off as he removed their weapons and put them on the counter behind her.

"Yes. Here and now, because your sneezing is turning me on, dammit."

She laughed softly.

When she was half-undressed, he scooped her up and put her down on the table, smoothly sweeping off the cutlery left behind in her fit of flinging stuff around to cover up her allergic reaction. Somewhere between one end of the room and the other, she managed to kick off the last pieces, and sat there wearing just her heavy boots and the oddly delicate and overly intricate underwear she took such pride in (' _lace_ ', she called it; ' _itchy_ ' he rebuked). Spreading her legs she pulled him close, planting a hungry kiss on his chin. Their tongues touched, gentle prodding quickly spiraling into a frantic, lust-fueled meeting.

The whole kissing thing was new to him. He liked it, sure, but lacking lips to respond the way humans did, he had to be a bit more... Forward. She liked it, as long as he didn't start nipping at her tongue: it was just a bit too soft to withstand the biting force of a horny turian.

Shepard had turned Garrus into a horribly horny turian, all right – perhaps he had an inter-species erotica kink that he just hadn't fully delved into.

Well, technically, he was delving into her. Or would be, soon.

Somehow, with that magical trick of hers that he'd never wrap his mind around, she had his cock in her hand and he inhaled sharply, feeling Shepard's expert hand working from the tip to the root in determined strokes.

"How do you do that?" he asked breathlessly, claws sinking into the soft flesh of her backside as she swiped the pad of her thumb along the underside of his cock. How she'd even slipped a condom on without him noticing went well beyond him. Where did she even keep them, and why did she bring them ground-side?

Actually, he understood perfectly why she brought condoms with her wherever they went.

She smiled at his question and held up one hand, flexing it in front of his face. "Five fingers."

Damn her and her human-ness.

Silencing her with another lustful bite, he put one hand on her thigh and began to slow tease upwards, to that spot that made her buck and beg every time when he touched it. He could feel her wetness through the thin fabric, running the convex curve of his claw against the labia, pressing against it until she began squirming and whimpering.

The little things he liked about her included the little noises, and they did him in every time.

Garrus' patience having worn thin, he pushed that ridiculously flimsy slip of cloth covering her pussy to the side and entered her in one swift motion, amused at the sharp intake of breath followed by a soft sigh. Waiting for her to adjust, his tongue traced a hot trail from her chin and down to her beautiful collarbones, just a hint of them, a hard bony edge in a bodily landscape of soft flesh, and his favorite place of her body.

She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him closer as he filled her up, moving gently to stimulate her clit with the ridge at the base of cock. His hands, however, he wasn't able to keep as calm, scratching at her back in the unrestrained way that was bound to leave deep marks. It was hard not to, her soft mounds inviting to a bit of rough handling, and when he began to increase the rhythm of his thrusts she began her low moans, gnawing on her lower lip as they moved together.

With an odd mewl, she began panting earnestly, breath hot against his plates, fingers digging into his collar as she pulled him close for a passionate kiss. "Harder," she begged, and he complied willingly. Shepard appreciated that he was rough, and he adored that she could take it without flinching.

Then all of a sudden she brought her arm up and shielded her face, turning away from him and sneezing.

It shouldn't have affected him as badly as it did, but he chuckled even as he drove into her, succumbing completely to his lusts, listening as she couldn't decide what she was doing: yelling out her impending climax or sneezing into her arm.

Deciding to make her mind up, he bit into her shoulder. It never failed to push her over when she was balancing on the edge, and she let out a startled shriek as she clamped down around his cock, shuddering and clinging on to him as he spent himself, teeth still in the skin of her shoulder, claws puncturing the skin in the small of her back as he took her as deep as he could.

He put his forehead against hers, letting them both come down from their high and catch their breath.

"So," she began, wiggling her nose as she spoke, "that was new."

He chuckled. "Do you think you can... You know... Sneeze more in bed?"

"If you rub flowers in my face, it's quite likely."

When he thought about it, Kasumi did keep a fresh bouquet of, what was it she called them, _roses_? In her occupied area of the port observatory. Now there was an enticing thought...

She let out a low whine when he slipped out and his length coiled back behind his plates. There was a ravenous quality to her sexual appetite, one he didn't mind working out of her, in all the possible ways she could demand. He just found it adorable how utterly disappointed she could be when they had to end their proclivities at times.

"We'll continue this back on the Normandy," he promised, licking at the marks of a bite that had somehow ended up on her jawline, puncturing the skin. The foreign blood tingled in his mouth, but it wouldn't harm him. He, unlike some others, didn't have any particular allergies, much to his relief.

A heavy kick against the door made Garrus scramble for his clothing, cursing that he'd more or less forgotten that they weren't alone in the base when he'd jumped Shepard.

"Hey!" Zaeed shouted from the other room, sounding as irritated as ever. "You two done creating mutant babies so we can get the hell off this rock?"


End file.
